Lottie+Lowy

On July 26, 1925, Mrs. Lottie Lowy, age 27, died at the Chicago office of Lucy Hagenow from an abortion performed that day.

In this case, Hagenow is identified as a midwife, though in other cases she is identified as a doctor. She also operated under the name Louise Hagenow.

Hagenow, who had already been implicated of the abortion deaths of Louise Derchow, Annie Dorris, Abbia Richards, and Emma Dep in San Francisco, would go on to be linked to over a dozen Chicago abortion deaths:


 * 1891: Minnie Deering
 * 1892: Sophia Kuhn and Emily Anderson
 * 1896: Hannah Carlson
 * 1899: Marie Hecht
 * 1905: Mary Putnam
 * 1906: Lola Madison
 * 1907: Annie Horvatich
 * 1925: Nina H. Pierce, Jean Cohen, Bridget Masterson, and Elizabeth Welter
 * 1926: Mary Moorehead

Hagenow was typical of criminal abortionists in that she was a physician.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see [|Abortion in the 1920s].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see[|The Bad Old Days of Abortion] Source:


 * [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive]

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